Using the passwd command from within a shell script

Question

I\'m writing a shell script to automatically add a new user and update their password. I don\'t know how to get passwd to read from the shell script instead of interactively

Answer 1

This is the definitive answer for a teradata node admin.

Go to your /etc/hosts file and create a list of IP's or node names in a text file.

SMP007-1
SMP007-2
SMP007-3

Put the following script in a file.

#set a password across all nodes
printf "User ID: "
read MYUSERID
printf "New Password: "
read MYPASS

while read -r i; do
    echo changing password on "$i"
    ssh root@"$i" sudo echo "$MYUSERID":"$MYPASS" | chpasswd
    echo password changed on "$i"
done< /usr/bin/setpwd.srvrs

Okay I know I've broken a cardinal security rule with ssh and root but I'll let you security folks deal with it.

Now put this in your /usr/bin subdir along with your setpwd.srvrs config file.

When you run the command it prompts you one time for the User ID then one time for the password. Then the script traverses all nodes in the setpwd.srvrs file and does a passwordless ssh to each node, then sets the password without any user interaction or secondary password validation.